Hunter Biden launched a cryptocurrency meme coin named after his infamous laptop scandal, and watched it lose virtually all its value in under an hour, a spectacular flameout that drew immediate mockery from the Trump family.
The token, called $LAPTOP, debuted on a Wednesday on the Base blockchain developed by Coinbase and began trading on the decentralized exchange Aerodrome. Within seconds, the price rocketed from roughly $3 to more than $300. Minutes later, the New York Post reported, the coin had surrendered nearly all of those gains, trading at approximately $2.60 by midday. Bloomberg pricing data confirmed the collapse.
The 56-year-old presidential scion, who has spent months making the media rounds since his father left office, framed the venture as both a financial play and a personal reclamation project. On X the day before the launch, Biden posted: "They turned laptop into a weapon. I turned it into a token."
The numbers tell a grim story for anyone who bought in near the top. Breitbart reported the token crashed more than 98 percent in its first hour, falling from above $190 to $2.15. Despite the collapse, $LAPTOP generated nearly $6 million in trading volume and briefly carried a market valuation above $750 million during the frenzy.
Eric Trump, the president's son, wasted no time. He posted on X after the debut: "Hunter should go back to painting."
The jab landed with some context. Biden's post-political career has included a string of ventures, from art sales to media appearances to legal battles, and $LAPTOP now joins the list.
What makes the crash harder to dismiss as ordinary market volatility is the project's pre-launch token distribution. Breitbart's reporting found that 100 million tokens, a full tenth of the total 1 billion supply, were distributed to market makers and an unknown address before public trading opened. A single unlabeled address received 14.5 million tokens roughly two hours before the coin went live. No one has identified who controls that wallet.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the plans, reported that Biden and his fellow founders are slated to receive 30 percent of the total supply. That allotment is locked for six months and becomes fully available over two years. The project also includes a "burn" mechanism, a feature that can permanently destroy up to 30 percent of the token supply if certain predetermined conditions are met. Two of those conditions: a Democrat winning the 2028 presidential election, and $LAPTOP's fully diluted valuation surpassing that of President Trump's own meme coin, $TRUMP.
In other words, the tokenomics are structured so that Biden and his partners hold a massive stake, early insiders got access before the public, and the coin's supply mechanics are tied to partisan political outcomes. That is not a recipe for a serious financial instrument. It is a recipe for a speculative cash grab dressed up in populist language.
Biden tried to distinguish $LAPTOP from the broader meme coin landscape by taking direct aim at President Trump's $TRUMP token. In a post on X announcing the project, Biden wrote: "Trump has broken trust in everything he's ever touched. And his token was no exception."
He also pledged to give 20 percent of the $LAPTOP supply to people who lost money trading $TRUMP, a gesture aimed at retail investors who bought in at or near the top. A July 2026 report from the Democratic staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, citing blockchain analysis, found that nearly 1 million retail traders lost an estimated $3.8 billion on $TRUMP. The token hit a record high of $73.43 in January 2025 and has since fallen approximately 97 percent, recently trading at about $2.20.
Biden's pledge to help those burned investors might have sounded generous, until $LAPTOP itself cratered within an hour. Anyone who bought $LAPTOP on the promise of a populist correction to $TRUMP's failures ended up in the same position: holding a token worth a fraction of what they paid.
On Tucker Carlson's podcast, one of several media appearances Biden has made since his father left office, he was blunt about his motives:
"I really believe in cryptocurrency. But I also want to make some money."
That candor, at least, was refreshing. But the gap between Biden's stated belief in decentralized finance and the reality of a token that lost 98 percent of its value in sixty minutes is wide enough to drive a truck through.
The $LAPTOP name is a deliberate provocation. The New York Post first reported the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop on October 14, 2020, publishing emails and photos that raised questions about his overseas business dealings and personal conduct. The story was initially suppressed on social media platforms and dismissed by dozens of former intelligence officials as bearing "the hallmarks of Russian disinformation." It was later authenticated by multiple news organizations.
Biden has since leaned into the laptop saga rather than running from it. On his Substack, he wrote: "So. The laptop. Here is what was on it. Twenty years of my life, or a version of it." He also declared in another post that "fiat is a sham, the banking class is corrupt, decentralized digital currency and the blockchain are the inevitable future, and the incumbents will fight it to the death."
The rhetoric is populist. The execution is something else. Distributing tokens to insiders before the public launch, locking founders' shares for just six months, and tying supply burns to partisan election outcomes does not look like a project built for the little guy. It looks like a project built to benefit the people closest to the project, starting with Hunter Biden himself.
Biden's recent media blitz has covered far more than crypto. He appeared on Bill Maher's show, where he made claims about Iran policy that drew a correction from the host. He has spoken publicly about his father's health, disclosing that the former president's prostate cancer has spread. And he has raised concerns about his own personal security. Through it all, the common thread is a man working hard to stay in the public eye, and to monetize the attention.
The meme coin market has become a graveyard for retail investors who chase celebrity-backed tokens. $TRUMP's 97 percent decline from its January 2025 peak cost nearly a million people an estimated $3.8 billion. Now $LAPTOP has repeated the pattern on a smaller scale: a massive spike, a flood of volume, and a near-total wipeout, all within minutes.
The people left holding the bag are not insiders, founders, or market makers who got their tokens before the public launch. They are ordinary traders who saw a headline, clicked a link, and bought in at the wrong moment. Some of them may have been the very $TRUMP losers Biden claimed he wanted to help.
No regulatory action or legal proceeding related to $LAPTOP has been reported. Whether securities regulators take an interest in the pre-launch token distribution, the insider allocation structure, or the promotional tactics, including, per Breitbart, the use of a YouTube broadcaster's subscriber email list to spam users with ads for the coin, remains an open question.
Hunter Biden said he wanted to reclaim the laptop narrative and make some money along the way. On the first count, he succeeded in getting attention. On the second, the only people who clearly made money are the ones who got in before the public did, and got out before the crash.
When a man tells you he wants to make money off you, believe him the first time.
